Arts

If you’ve got a video buff on your list, you’ll find that many of this season’s DVD picks are about looking back, about holding onto yesterday, or yesteryear.  

The Globe picks the most giftable music-related books of the holiday season, including Rod Stewart, “Rod: The Autobiography”; and Neil Young, “Waging Heavy Peace”. 

If printed books are to survive the avalanche of e-books and screen-based media, their rescuers may well be graphic novels.  

Here’s a sampling of attractive and worthy journals, several of them locally produced, sure to thrill even the most critical of readers.  

The most giftable box sets of the holiday season including Elvis Presley, “Prince From Another Planet”; The English Beat, “The Complete Beat”; and Woody Guthrie, “Woody at 100”. 

While the definition of “Today” is a little broad the disc is a representative slice, both naughty and nice, of the contemporary pop scene’s take on the season. 

The Globe picks the most giftable reissues. 

The most giftable music DVDs of the holiday season, including Frank Sinatra, “Primetime”, LCD Soundsystem, “Shut up and Play the Hits”; and O.A.R., “Live on Red Rocks”. 

The 73-minute film follows the pop sensations on their “Up All Night” tour and features live concert footage and behind-the-scenes extras.  

Spread over four CDs, with an accompanying 64-page booklet, the lavish set is the equivalent of a college course on the past 50 years of Jamaican popular music.  

Forget the Grinch or Scrooge, the most-dreaded characters this time of year are the Hard to Buy For.  

It can be challenging to shop for the hipster 20-something in your life.  

Ideas are the key to a successful shopping expedition, and here are more than 35 of them to help you finish off your list.